My lament for the dying art of rhyming verse. Yesterday, I read through loads of literary journals, and only 2 poems that were published had any…
Eulogy for Rhyme
You who have exiled Rhyme to unsung antiquity!
Whose hearts jump and skitter not at melody and harmony!
No apology will I offer to cool your virgin skin
And stroke your tone-deaf soul as it damns
My lover buried underneath these fertile grounds of dismissal
Hear me now!
I say to you, to All!
To all who proclaimed His wretched fall
From Poetic Grace with parched lips wrinkled
With distaste:
I AM the Necromancer, excavating and resurrecting ghosts
Dancing in moonlight , spinning tales to fill the starving sails
Of a sinking ship bound for Eternity
Committing the ultimate treason
Seducing verse with rhyme and reason
Betraying the frigid, enlightened Elite
For a wicked,
Delicious
kiss on the mouth,
and a scarlet,
Wet
whisper in the ear
May 29, 2009 at 7:35 pm
Wow, great word images in this! Great job!
I mean …
A great job you did of rhyming verse,
of such matters, I don’t converse.
Ne’ertheless, respect I hold,
for your honoring the things of old.
… how’s that? 🙂
May 29, 2009 at 10:29 pm
Darc–I am impressed! I may have to have you ghost write for me:) Mnemosyne–thank you. I was really surprised that rhyme is so rare anymore. I personally love playing with words so much that I don’t think I could ever give it up 🙂
May 29, 2009 at 9:57 pm
Yes, well done indeed! You might single-handedly bring about a much-needed revival yet.
Encore, please.
May 30, 2009 at 11:05 am
oh i like them too. whne they are good they can be very good. for myself i find it very hard to say what i want with the rhyme thing. my vocabulary is far too small.
keep them going.
D!
May 30, 2009 at 11:25 am
D-What matter is vocabulary? Poetry is as poetry says–and yours says so much. In fact, you are one of my favorite writers..:) Don’t change a thing!
June 9, 2009 at 9:24 am
thanks again calliopes,
that is nice of you and i truely appreciate it. don’t listen too much to my mumbling, just a passing mood. but yes, i think one needs a really good langauge to rhyme a good poem, see also what Charles said about it.
personally, i find it hard. as for now.
Blessings
D!
June 3, 2009 at 6:57 pm
A lovely piece of verse.
I too love rhyming poetry, and wish there was more of it being written. I don’t know quite when it went out of fashion.
One thing I do know is, ask someone to recite their favourite poem and nine times out of ten it is in rhyming verse. Just an observation.
June 3, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Hi Paul, so glad to see you! I’m still revisiting your poem in my mind…so wonderful! Thanks so much for the compliment, it means a lot to me. And yes–it is so true–favorite poems do usually rhyme. I never thought about that before, but it is true. Perhaps there is hope after all:)
June 4, 2009 at 8:18 am
Oh Danielle, you know how I love rhythm and rhyme, melody and harmony and Necromancer; one of my favourite words. And as for the last 6 lines, very devilish 🙂
June 7, 2009 at 9:39 pm
😉 we are two of a kind, my friend…
June 9, 2009 at 4:34 am
Kudos. I agree with you, nobody rhymes anymore. Probably because they can’t, rhyme consists of meter and has to flow. It is not as easy as it looks and I know very few poets who employ it simply saying they don’t like it, I don’t believe that makes them a well rounded writer. Another thing that has fallen by the wayside as you would say “antiquity” is the use of archaic and Elizabethan language which is truly sad because this is the root of poetry and the staple of any College poetry appreciation course. Shakespeare, Lord Byron or Percy Blythe Shelley penned some of the most eloquent & heart wrenching poetry. I always try to employ all aspects of poetry although I do not write forms.
June 19, 2009 at 12:21 pm
[…] with my wife about the disappearance of rhyme in poetry, and also after reading a lovely poem on Calliopespen’s blog on the same […]
June 25, 2009 at 9:29 pm
Any writing that doesn’t acknowledge the musicality of words, rhyme and rhythm and sound just isn’t poetry to me, just prose with linebreaks and words left out. So I agree with you wholeheartedly.
June 28, 2009 at 11:17 pm
Hi Paul! Thanks so much for stopping by and commenting. There is definitely a lot of poetry out there that would qualify as nothing more than linebreaks. I do enjoy rhyme, but also appreciate other forms, such as free verse–if the poet has tackled the art of the poetic line. It is certainly more complex than it would seem:)